Bail pleas of two cops involved in Sulaiman Lashari murder case rejected

An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Thursday rejected the bail pleas of two constables, Imran Araien and Yaseen Jamali, two companions of Salman Abro, the main accused in the 2014 murder case of teenager Sulaiman Lashari.

The court saw no legal worth in the bail applications moved by Araien and Jamali, who are accomplices of Salman Abro, the son of SSP Ghulam Sarwar Abro. After hearing the arguments of the attorneys for the two detained constables, the court rejected their bail pleas.

Salman Abro is accused of killing 18-year-old Lashari in cold blood at his house in DHA with the assistance of five armed guards in 2014. The charge-sheet in this high-profile murder case was submitted to ATC-III. The same court had accepted the charge-sheet and later the five accused were indicted in the murder case.

However, the counsel for the accused had moved two applications challenging the status of framing charges and examination of the crime scene where Lashari and one of Abro’s guards had been killed.

The attorneys of the main accused had claimed that the the framing of charges was against some provisions of the law and also that the crime scene hadn’t been properly examined by the investigators.

However, the court, after hearing their exhaustive arguments, rejected their stance pertaining to the framing of charges. It also found no legal grounds to have the crime scene re-examined, and rejected the second application as well.

The counsel for the accused, Advocate Abdur Razzaq, later had challenged the nature of the trial in the Sindh High Court, arguing that it was not a case of terrorism but that of murder and therefore, should be shifted to a regular court.

However, the SHC rejected the plea and declared that the case will proceed in the assigned anti-terrorism court. The teenager was shot dead at around 2am in his house while studying on the balcony, allegedly by Abro and his five armed guards, after a petty argument between the two.

A case had been registered at the Darakhshan police station against Abro and four police constables – Muhammad Rasheed, Yasin, Maqbool and Imran Araien – who had accompanied him. One of the police guards, Zaheer, had been killed when Lashari’s private security guards had returned fire.

The police had also seized the vehicle and the weapons used in the crime. On the court’s orders, Abro was shifted to the juvenile jail after a medical board set up on the court orders had declared him to be below 18 years of age.